If We Were Villains

by M.L. Rio

One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.

“Your time will come to be the tragic hero. Just wait for spring.”

We had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.

Dellecher was less an academic institution than a cult.

we did so without knowing that we were now part of some strange fanatic religion where anything could be excused so long as it was offered at the altar of the Muses.

Alexander: “I might make out with James tomorrow.” James: “Lucky me.” Filippa: “Could be worse. Remember Midsummer, when Oliver head-butted me in the face?” Me: “In my defense, I tried to kiss you nicely, but I couldn’t see because Puck squirted his love juice right in my eye.” Alexander: “There was so much innuendo in that sentence I don’t even know where to start.”

“You know,” James said, “for a boy who likes other boys, you provide a lot of heterosexual commentary.” Alexander: “I might make an exception for Meredith, but she’d have to be wearing that robe.” James: “You’re disgusting.” Alexander: “I’m adaptable.”

Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.

James: “Like she’s a shark and you’re an oblivious fur seal.” Me: “Why is that the word everyone’s using to describe me lately?” James: “Who else called you a fur seal?”

When the rest of us arrived, we would have nothing to do but give our thanks to Dionysus and indulge.

“Are you high?” “No.” “Are you full of crap?” “Yes.”

“We’ve had a long week. I plan to make a long night of it, and if you two aren’t royally fucked by midnight I will take it upon myself to see that you are fucked, royally or otherwise, by morning. Understand?” Me: “You make it sound a lot like date rape.” Alexander: “Do as I’ve said and it won’t come to that.” James: “You’re both of you going to hell.” Alexander: “Directly.” Me: “Posthaste.”

I decided that perhaps “brave” and “crazy” were not mutually exclusive.

Suddenly we were both embarrassed (which seemed absurd, after the last five minutes of intimate conversation and casual nakedness).

Richard floated on his back, neck twisted unnaturally, mouth gaping, face frozen in a Greek mask of agony. Blood crawled dark and sticky across his face from the crush of tissue and bone that used to be an eye socket, a cheekbone—now cracked and broken open like an eggshell.

I don’t have any old friends except Filippa. How do the others think of me now? I haven’t seen them. I don’t know.

There is no comfort like complicity.

How well I’d been trained to mistrust her. And by whom? Richard? Gwendolyn?

It didn’t really matter where I slept, I decided. Nothing mattered much after that morning. Our two souls—if not all six—were forfeit.

Richard’s death had been officially dismissed as an accident, but this revelation did surprisingly little to allay our unease.

clattered in and threw myself into

Alexander: “If it makes you feel any better, I’d have done exactly the same thing.” Me: “What are you?” Alexander: “Sexually amphibious.” Me: “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.” Alexander: “You should try it.”

The Christmas masque was traditionally spectacular, and the winter of 1997 was no exception.

finally! know i know when all of this actually takes place! how hard would it have been to mention this earlier?

Everyone in the room was watching James—how could they not?—but I was the only one who really knew him, every inch.

James looked up, looked right at me. He seemed surprised to see me standing there, though I didn’t know for the life of me why he should be. Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver—little difference.

James was in love with Wren, and I was blindly, savagely jealous.

I stop at the end, looking down into the water. I’ve aged well, one might say. My hair is still dark, my eyes still clear bright blue, my body firmer and stronger than it was before prison. I need glasses now to read, but besides that and a few extra scars, I haven’t changed much. I feel older than thirty-one.

“Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?” The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “I blame him for all of it,” I say.

“We spent four years—and most of us years before that—immersed in Shakespeare. Submerged. Here we could indulge our collective obsession. We spoke it as a second language, conversed in poetry, and lost touch with reality, a little.” I reconsider. “Well, that’s misleading. Shakespeare is real, but his characters live in a world of real extremes. They swing from ecstasy to anguish, love to hate, wonder to terror. It’s not melodrama, though, they’re not exaggerating. Every moment is crucial.”

Imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”

(a frustration exacerbated by the fact that, after ten years, I still think of myself as an actor).

“The thing about Shakespeare is, he’s so eloquent … He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.” I stop. Shrug. “You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”

Being trapped together in the Castle with our guilt and Richard’s ghost, it was terrible in a way. But being divided from each other, flung to every corner of the world to face it on our own—that was worse.”

“We cracked up,” I say, but the phrase feels wrong. It was not so simple, or so clean, as a piece of fractured glass. “But we didn’t really shatter until we were all back together again.”

Christmas in Ohio was disastrous.

How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.

Gray like steel, gold like honey.

“Oliver, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I want to hurt the whole world.”

“I think he was enamored with you because you were so enamored with him.”

If he’d had enough nerve to ask, I would have told him. My infatuation with James (there’s the word, never mind “enamored”) transcended any notion of gender. Colborne—regular Joe, happily married, father of two, not unlike my own father in some respects—does not strike me as the sort of man who would understand this. No man is, perhaps, until he experiences it himself and deniability is no longer plausible. What were we, then? In ten years I have not found an adequate word to describe us.

COME NOT BETWEEN THE DRAGON AND HIS WRATH

TRUST NOT IN THE TAMENESS OF THE WOLF

“Where is the villain, Edmund?” I asked. He smiled crazily at me and echoed, “Where is the villain, Edmund? A pause, for punctuation, yes? But not the playwright’s—commas belong to the compositors. Where is the villain Edmund? Here, sir, but trouble him not—his wits are gone.”

To notice, at first, that Meredith was missing.

one hand clapped over my mouth, afraid I might vomit my heart out onto the floor.

Find out this villain, Edmund—”

we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars … as if we were villains on necessity;

“Where were you last night?” I asked. She looked away. “I just—I had to go somewhere.” “I don’t understand.” “I’ll tell you,” she said, absently tracing the notch of my collarbone with one fingertip. “Tonight. Later.”

“Who is it that you’re jealous of? Him or me?”

I had a brutally hard grip on his arm—I was bigger than he was, and for the first time I wanted both of us to be keenly aware of it.